This invention relates to an apparatus and method for connected forming and controlled stacking of material.
A need for effectively forming and stacking multiple forms has existed for quite some time. The advent of the industrial revolution and continued pressures to lower costs and raise quality have affected every business engaged in the processing and packaging of multiple formed products. Many devices have been developed in various industries to automate the processing so that economical stacks of similar objects can be produced by machine. The Carbon et at. device, U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,741; the Miles device, U.S. Pat. No. 4,074,509; the Wagner et at. device, U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,855; the Steurmer devices, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,421,422 and 4,630,725; the Mally device, U.S. Pat. No. 4,529,082; the Cruver device, U.S. Pat. No. 5,094,585; and the Callahan Jr. device, U.S. Pat. No. 5,165,218 are representative of this development. In general, the apparatuses and methods disclosed in these patents deal with attempts to automate the stacking of disc-like materials, i.e. hamburgers, cookies, and the like. A general solution to the problem of dealing with raw materials is to harden them in some manner, either by freezing or cooking, so that after they have been formed and hardened, they may then be arranged by machines into certain desired stacking patterns.
A variety of cookie machines deal with the problems of handling and stacking cookies specifically. The Walker et al. device, U.S. Pat. No. 5,095,684 and the Hardage et al. device, U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,570, both deal with handling cookies that have been extruded and baked. Once baked, the cookies then can be handled and stacked in convenient and economical portions.
The extrusion of single discs onto a conveyor belt is well known in the art. The difficulty arises, however, when multiple forms are extruded at the same time and the attempt is made to form layers of multiple forms one on top of the other. That is, while multiple single layers may be possible, those layers will be non-uniform, in that, the pressed forms, if dropped as they would need to be in order to form a stack, would resultantly change their relationship to each other upon impact. The second layer, therefore, would not likely define the previous layer directly below it and the second layer itself would move in relation to the first layer. This difficulty has been overcome in the prior art by first hardening the material by freezing or cooking the discs to be stacked. Obviously, the ability to stack prior to cooking or freezing would be a distinct economic advantage.
A drawback to the frozen or cooked disc handling devices and methods known in the art, however, is that uniform stacking of multiple discs in their unhardened form has not been accomplished. Many advantages arise from an ability to stack unfrozen, uncooked, "raw" materials, in that, the forms to be stacked may frozen and/or handled after stacking. Further, in particular, in the cookie business, it is desirable to age cookie dough after forming. This aging process gives the cookie the gourmet taste preferred by consumers. Thus, there is a need in the art for providing an apparatus and method which enables the forming and stacking of uncooked, unfrozen material in its "raw" soft form, in more than single forms. It, therefore, is an object of this invention to provide an apparatus and method for connected forming and controlled stacking of material.